This is a story about Jesus and Mary and about an attempt at equality. It started with the crucified black Jesus in the photo above. He used to hang in the beautiful 11th century Chiesa Madre…

Tradition says that Luke's icon of the nursing Madonna was brought to Italy by Dionysius the Areopagite, a Greek disciple of Paul, who became the first bishop and the patron saint of Crotone…

Here we have yet another whitened Madonna, before and after renovations. Some locals still call her black while others don’t…

There are at least two versions of the legend of the Crowned Virgin of the Poor. Both are made available in print at the sanctuary…

Part of what made the Madonna of Loreto world famous is the house she arrived with. It is a dark, little brick house called the Holy House of Mary…

The Patroness of Lucera is a very powerful and unique presence. Though she clearly looks like a Black Madonna and once was called such, this is no longer the case. Here is why…

In the cathedral of Manfredonia there are two important images of Mary. It seems that together they were brought to Siponto from Constantinopel in the 5th century by the first bishop of Siponto, Lorenzo Maiorano…

This Mother of God is also called the Madonna of Loreto. I suppose she is meant to be a copy or variation of that other, much more famous Black Madonna…

For two or three hundred years starting during the 9th or 10th centuries, many pilgrims visited the shrine of the Virgin Mary in Moiano, and there were miracles and cures…

A lovely story is told of how this icon miraculously escaped the iconoclastic destructions of the 8th century in the Byzantine empire…

Here we have yet another formerly Black Madonna who has been restored to her original pigmentation…

This is one of quite a few Black Madonnas that are attributed to Luke the Evangelist…

This lovely and very old Madonna is the original ‘Virgin of Tenderness’, a type of icon called Eleusa (Greek: tenderness). She is one of the numerous Black Madonnas believed to have been painted by Saint Luke the evangelist…

There are two Black Madonnas in the sanctuary of St. Anthony of Padua. One was whitened in spite of more than 800 years of tradition venerating a Black Madonna with a strong connection to St. Anthony and proof existing that both Madonnas were conceived as Black from the start. Our Mother’s black skin was stolen, because too many people found her more beautiful with white skin: a racist mutilation!

According to tradition Luke the Evangelist carved this statue and St. Eusebius brought it to Italy…

Stories as to where Our Lady came from vary greatly. Some say she was brought by a monk, others by a shepherd…

Local tradition, as recounted by the historian Armerino Charanda, attributes this icon to the hand of St. Luke the Evangelist.

Many Black Madonnas reside in places formerly dedicated to a pre-Christian goddess, but this one is different…

Although this Madonna is listed as a Black Madonna in several indexes the local Sicilian parishioners don’t see her as black, if they see her at all…

In 1564 the order of Augustinian monks brought this Black Madonna to San Severo from Sicily. Nobody knows how old she was at that point…